According to news reports, a woman named Carletha Cole is a former member of Carroll’s staff. She’s currently facing charges under a Florida law for allegedly tape recording a conversation between other Carroll staffers and giving the recording to a reporter.

Cole claims Carroll is out to get her because the former staffer walked in on the lieutenant governor having a sexual encounter with Beatriz Ramos.

Yeah, Beatriz is another woman.

According to news reports, here’s how Carroll responded to Cole’s accusation:

“The problem is that when you have these accusations that come out, it’s not just one person you’re attacking. It’s an entire family. My husband doesn’t want to hear that. He knows the type of woman I am. I mean, my kids know the type of woman I am. For 29 years – I’m the one that’s married for 29 years. The accuser’s the one that’s been single for a long time. So usually black women that look like me don’t engage in relationships like that.”

Did I misinterpret Carroll? Was she indeed saying, “I’m WAY too fine to be a lesbian”? Maybe it’s just me; I’ve never heard the “I’m way too fine to be a lesbian” defense before.

In a story about the Carroll-Cole-Ramos controversy that ran on the web site http://www.eurweb.com, there’s a photo of Carroll. I have to admit: Carroll IS fine. Not just your average fine, mind you. Some women are so fine that if they told a brother to go home and smack his mama, the poor sucker would do it.

In fact, the woman is smoking hot kind of fine. So smoking hot that I’d switch my political party affiliation to Republican, if Baltimore Democrats hadn’t embarrassed me into doing that years ago.

Absent further elaboration from Carroll, we can only speculate about what she meant. Having little to nothing else to go on, I have to assume Carroll was saying this:

“Look, I’m WAY too smoking hot to be a lesbian. Most lesbians are – well, how do I put this delicately? – kind of homely. OK, you dragged it out of me: most lesbians look like they’ve been whomped with an ugly stick the size of a redwood tree.”

If that IS what Carroll was saying, I can’t say that I agree. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have the "huevos" to ‘fess up to it.

Sharon J. Lettman-Hicks, the executive director and chief executive officer of the National Black Justice Coalition, was so upset by Carroll’s comments that she wrote a piece for the Huffington Post web site giving Florida’s lieutenant governor a piece of her mind.

“Carroll (insulted) every black woman who is a lesbian, bisexual and/or single,” Lettman-Hicks huffed on Huffington. In an attempt to bolster Cole’s credibility, Lettman-Hicks mentioned that Carroll’s accuser is “a grandmother and a minister, who took a lie detector test regarding the accusations and passed.”

I’ll not accuse Lettman-Hicks of insulting every black woman that’s not a grandmother and a minister, but I will advise her that there is no such machine as a “lie detector.”

It’s called a polygraph machine, and the thing’s “tests” aren’t pass/fail. A liar that really believes the lie he or she is telling can easily “pass” a polygraph test. That’s why the results of polygraph tests aren’t admissible in court.

But I digress. Lettman-Hicks’ point was that a lot of people, men, women, gays, lesbians, straight folks, will indeed find Carroll’s “black women that look like me” don’t engage in lesbian relationships comment infuriating. (Lettman-Hicks did, in fact, say she was furious. Carroll had better hope she doesn’t run across Lettman-Hicks’ path any time soon.)

If Carroll didn’t mean any insult to lesbians, then fine. But Florida’s lieutenant governor, much like Lucy Ricardo, sure has some ‘splaining to do.